Seaborn for President '14
by GoSantos
Summary: It's 2013, and Governor Sam Seaborn is a candidate for the presidency for 2014. Starting off with an extended prologue charting the series of events that brought him to this place, this story covers the trials and tribulations of the young governor's bid to take back the White House for the Democrats.
1. Prologue Part 1 – Santos Administration

Seaborn for President '14

Disclaimer:_ The West Wing_ and its characters belong to and were created by Rob Lowe, Aaron Sorkin, John Wells, NBC and Warner Brothers. Don't sue etc. Thanks/attributions to HarshLight/LucienTJ of Flickr, , Rob Lowe and Electoral Atlas for the image.

"Sam. You're gonna run for President one day. Don't be scared. You can do it. I believe in you."

**January 20****th**** 2013, Sacramento, California.** It had been a tumultuous six years that had brought Samuel Norman Seaborn to this place, standing outside the state Capitol Building near a podium in the 45° heat, the bright sun bearing down approvingly on the assembled mass of his supporters. Both the choice of day and the imagery of the setting were deliberate, carefully planned by the young governor's campaign staff, as the state Capitol Building was in fact designed as a replica of its namesake 2,732 miles away, where they hoped he would stand under more triumphant circumstances in exactly two years. As US Senator Janet Hark, co-chair of his new campaign committee, prepared to introduce him from the podium, Sam thought briefly about why he was here. If he could capture the right feeling before he approached the podium, one he felt his audience shared, he could convey it with all the more conviction and speak to both their hearts and their minds.

Prologue Part 1 – The Santos Administration

It had all begun hopefully enough in January 2007. Matthew Vincente Santos, a hale and vital 45-year old from a working-poor background and the first Latino president, came into office on a message of hope, pledging to heal Washington and the nation's ailing education and healthcare systems. He was a devout-Catholic Democrat who had come top of his class at Annapolis, seen aerial combat in Desert Storm and worked as a community activist in downtrodden minority neighbourhoods in his native Houston, before serving four years as the first Latino mayor of America's fourth largest city - winning re-election in 1997 with 91% of the vote - and three terms in the US House of Representatives, where he built a record of achievement as a bipartisan dealmaker and was even eventually appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Above all, he had come from nowhere to defeat two US Vice Presidents in the Democratic primaries and the "unbeatable" Arnold Vinick in the Electoral College in November, and had even taken with him a Democratic-controlled House, something Josiah Bartlet had never managed despite the best efforts of him and his staffers, including Sam.

After the brutal campaign and his 41 to 59 loss in the California 47th back in early 2003, Seaborn had decided to take a break from politics. He had quoted George Bernard Shaw's old axiom about politics ("An election is a moral horror, as bad as battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned") on the phone to an understanding President Bartlet as he had turned down a potential promotion to Counselor to the President, instead opting to stay in California. In LA, Sam had taken a job with the major law firm Ross-Lipton LLP, rapidly rising to partner and reforming many of their corporate practices. He had still stayed involved in politics on the side of course, doing some fundraising in LA and Orange County Democratic circles, but he'd kept it light in order to keep his life free of too much political hassle. He even met a woman, fellow high-flying lawyer Vrinda "Vikki" Rajan-Brown, and the two became engaged in 2006. But Santos' win started to rekindle Seaborn's belief in politics once again, and when Josh Lyman headhunted him for Deputy Chief of Staff, he agreed. He remembered well what he had told Josh when he'd accepted:

"I didn't come because you're a silver-tongued recruiter or because I got tired of summer in January. Santos may be the future this country wants. For all the partisan noises made on the margin, we're a nation of centrists and he may just be the right man with the right message at the right time and if he is, I wanna be a part of it. But he can't do it without you…You're the one who's gotta make this go, who's gonna cut through the reflexive demagoguery and timidity and make people do what they were sent here to do - actually govern. Serve the voter's interests, instead of striking poses and playing gotcha. It's gonna be next to impossible"

As Deputy COS ("Josh to Josh's Leo", as Lyman had put it) Sam was in charge of strategic planning and had substantial input on legislative and electoral strategy. Around him, he had a world-class team. Some he knew from the old days. Amy Gardner was Legislative Director, and his close friends Donna Moss and Ainsley Hayes were Chief of Staff to the First Lady and White House Counsel, respectively. Seaborn also found that he got along well with the First Lady. Those from Team Santos that he didn't know personally he quickly came to respect; the brusque-but-brilliant Communications Director Lou Thornton, the lively White House Press Secretary Annabeth Schott (quickly poached from the First Lady's office when their original choice for WH Press Sec dropped out), fellow speechwriter and 23-year old Stanford grad Otto Castaneda, Senior Aide and fellow Princetonian Beltrán "Bram" Howard and friendly presidential secretary and former Santos congressional aide Ronna Beckman. Good things were happening in Sam's personal life and those of the people around him. Vikki took a job in the Justice Department's Civil Fraud office, the two of them bought a nice house in Bethesda and they had a lovely wedding in July 2007. Sam also got to watch as his two close friends, Josh and Donna, began developing their relationship after years of tip-toeing, while Charlie Young, a student at Georgetown Law and Legislative Director for the US Students Association, quietly got engaged to former first daughter Zoey Bartlet.

On the security and foreign policy side of things, Santos brilliantly chose his former opponent Vinick to be Secretary of State, the well-respected Nancy McNally for UN Ambassador and four-star USMC General Scott Glenn as his National Security Advisor. However, to Josh's relief, Senator John Swain (R-Rhode Island) was uninterested in serving as Secretary of Defense, meaning the post went to Democrat instead, former CIA Director and Atlantic Council chairman Rob Konrad. Nicholas Alexander remained Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Santos' first Treasury Secretary was Harvard economist and Wall Streeter Dale Rosenthal, who narrowly pipped Dem favourite Maya Connor – Connor was a cofounder of a then-small social networking company called MyBook, a former Chief of Staff to US Treasury Secretary Ken Kato and CFO at Anterras Computers, and a prolific Democratic fundraiser. Oliver Babish, Bartlet White House Counsel and before that a corruption-busting Inspector-General and crime-fighting Assistant US Attorney in Chicago, was to be the administration's new Attorney General, while former Santos transition chair, legendary DNC chairman and businessman/attorney Barry Goodwin was made Secretary of Commerce. Angela Blake, who had served under Bartlet in 2003-2004 and previously as Deputy Secretary of Labor under Leo, would oversee healthcare reform as Secretary for Health and Human Services, while Missouri Congresswoman Robin Keenitz (chair of the House Ag Committee and part of the Keenitz Democratic political dynasty in the state) was to be Agriculture Secretary and Natalie Hiojosa (former Superintendent of Houston schools under Mayor Santos) become Secretary of Education. They were just three of the seven talented women in what experts termed the most "diverse cabinet in history", even if Santos had turned down another promising woman, popular six-term Florida Congresswoman Carol Gellsey, for the VP nod – that honour instead went to second-term Pennsylvania Governor Eric Baker, a senior statesman with substantial gravitas.

Baker and Babish were not easy confirmations, of course. Baker in particular was a fight, as despite the cunning-but-slippery new Speaker Mark Berman Sellner (D-New York 2nd) arranging a quick confirmation for him in the House, in the Senate the Republicans had a 54-46 majority and crotchety ultra-conservative Senator Clancy Banghart (R-Alabama) and his Rules Committee had jurisdiction. There, Banghart and his wingnut committee members systematically battered Baker, attacking him for death penalty commutations he had made as governor, for Pennsylvania's budget deficit and most controversial of all, they asked questions about his wife Dorothy's mental state and whether she was "fit to be Second Lady of the United States" given a secret history of requiring anti-depressants. This put the Baker family under immense strain, to the point that newly-confirmed Secretary of State Vinick, an old friend of the Bakers from when Eric had been a Senate staffer in the mid-80s, decided to intervene despite having initially vowed not to "lift a finger" to help Santos with the matter. Vinick spoke to his former right-hand Sheila Brooks, who was now Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Robert Royce (R-Pennsylvania). Both she and Royce agreed that Banghart's conduct was distasteful, though Royce, fearful of alienating conservatives given his 2010 presidential ambitions, was still reluctant to intervene. To this end, Sam also arranged to release two seemingly unrelated stories to the press; one was a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) poll showing that if the VP confirmation fell through, the still-popular Baker could still run and threaten Royce for re-election to his Senate seat in 2008, while the other was the news that Shield Armaments of Huntsville, Alabama was under serious consideration to receive a lucrative new missile contract that would create 500 new jobs in the area. Fearing a Baker challenge, Royce and Brooks asked Banghart to back down and asked the administration to finalise the Alabama contract in order to buy him off – thus, Baker was confirmed.

The fledgling administration's legislative agenda also got off to a fairly good start. Santos' lobbying bill, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, was passed despite the initially vehement opposition of Speaker Sellner (mostly after Sam and Amy played hardball, threatening to leak details of Sellner's own meetings with lobbyists to the press). Also passed was the education reform bill, the 21st Century American Education Act, which aimed to end teacher tenure, lengthen the school year, reduce class sizes, introduce performance-related pay for teachers and provide new infrastructural money for schools. There were of course some inevitable congressional compromises made to appease anti-government Republicans and austere Blue Dog Democrats, mostly the infrastructural funding being reduced and the federally-mandated school year expansion being cut to 200 days (up from an average of 180, but still less than 240 in nations like Japan), but overall it was still a very good bill. A third concession angered Sam, however - over the strenuous objections of both him and HHS Secretary Blake, Santos and Josh agreed with Royce to shelve the administration's healthcare reforms (considered unlikely to pass the Republican Senate anyway) until after the midterms in exchange for the education overhaul and the successful passage of the first budget, which included a tax rise on incomes over a million. On the health front, Sam, Angela Blake and the administration did at least pass an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Programme (SCHIP), however, covering four million new poor children. Congress also ratified a new free trade deal with Peru, pleasing American business and enriching both nations. Finally, President Santos successfully led the fight to get Don't Ask Don't Tell repealed in the military, leaning on his own service background in a way Bartlet never quite could. In February 2008 in his second State of the Union, he told Congress the following;

"I was an F/A-18 pilot in the United States Marine Corps, and I knew that there were at least a few men I served with who loved other men, and women who loved other women. I didn't care, though. None of us did. It did not affect my unit's 'cohesion', as some would say. All I needed to know was that if there was a hostile bandit on my wing, they would have my back – and they did. I came back from the Gulf alive and eager to serve because of the efforts of those men and women. We liberated Kuwait because of the efforts of those men and women. And let's not kid ourselves that we fought in the Balkans or Vietnam or Korea or Europe without people just like them, or that there aren't any gay and lesbian Americans in uniform holding warring sides apart in Kazakhstan and the Middle East right as we speak. It is time that they be allowed to serve their nation openly and proudly, as they deserve."

That was a proud moment for Sam – he had written those words with Otto, and a month later, the repeal bill passed in the Senate.

There were successes abroad too. In the Middle East, the peace process Bartlet started at Camp David continued, despite America having to withdraw half of its peacekeepers so that they could join the force of 130,000 being put into the Republic of Kazakhstan to keep Russia and China apart. Saeb Mukarat, a moderate, was now the Palestinian Chairman following the assassination of Farad in September 2006. In new elections in Israel in 2007, Likud Prime Minister Eli Zahavy was replaced by an ever more pro-peace PM, Labor Party leader Daliah Zalmanovich. Meanwhile on Kazakhstan, progress was made despite Santos' initial opposition to the entire intervention and deeply divided public opinion. In March 2013, Canadian Prime Minister Michel Dallaire brokered an agreement at a summit in Tashkent in neighbouring Uzbekistan between the leaders of Russia, China, Kazakhstan and the US. Under the terms of the Tashkent Accords, China would get a strategic partnership agreement with Kazakhstan and a new oil pipeline, while Russia would hold a share of Kazakhstan's state oil company. The country's first ever free elections would be held in 2008, subject to international monitoring, after which all three countries would remove most of their troops, though each would retain a small strategic garrison (Russia in the north of the country, China in the southeast and America in Ayagoz, central Kazakhstan). Further disputes between the various parties delayed the elections until June 2009, but when they were held, the result was promising - Roza Kunayeva, an Oxford-educated reformist and a former Senior Vice President at the World Bank, defeated incumbent ex-KGB President Aslan Tarimov in a landslide. Kunayeva ran on supporting the Accord and a new sovereign, democratic future for Kazakhstan. Plans were made for the withdrawal of Russian and Chinese troops, followed by the Americans soon after.

However, not all had been smooth sailing for the administration, either at home or abroad, and by the end of four years the American people had begun to feel very insecure. The delayed withdrawal in Kazakhstan had cost the administration dearly, and the US mission had seen 146 American lives lost to a combination of civil riots in the unstable country, occasional clashes with pro-Tarimov Kazakh government forces, attacks by an Islamist terror group known as the Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins (JCAM) in what was after all a 70% Muslim country (something that had been little-considered during the original decision to send in the troops, it seemed) and friendly-fire incidents. Likewise, a steady drumbeat of American deaths had been occurring in the Middle East ever since Bartlet's decision to send peacekeepers there too in 2005, a situation not helped by the need to greatly reduce the number available there, even with the progress made between the Israeli and Palestinian governments. Further, the already-extensive military deployments meant that President Santos could do little more than threaten meagre sanctions against the still-belligerent regimes in Iran, Syria and North Korea, something the Republicans mocked him for. The election of a Hispanic president unfortunately brought with it a surge in domestic threats from extreme-right white supremacist and militia groups, causing Helen Santos great anxiety and putting unprecedented strain on the Secret Service. Lastly, Bartlet's last-minute pardon of Toby Ziegler over the shuttle leak, and President Santos' refusal to condemn his predecessor for it, was also a Republican gripe.

Meanwhile, the Republicans also stressed that since Vinick had technically won the popular vote in the election, Santos had a "legitimacy problem", a view many Americans bought into despite Santos' initial popularity. Santos only made minimal progress against the deficit, the result of huge costs imposed by Kazakhstan and the sorely-needed education reforms, but this again didn't stop the Republicans blaming him for it. A mini-scandal brewed in August 2007 when the conservative _New York Post_ reported that President Santos had been making payments to Anita Morales, the young clerk with an eight year-old girl who had worked at City Hall under Mayor Santos, reporting that the money was "hush money" for an affair. The White House sent Sam to Essex County, New York to talk to Bruno Gianelli, one of only five people in the world who knew of the payments (along with the Santoses, Anita herself and Secretary Vinick) and the only one Santos didn't trust, but Bruno pled ignorance that it was him. Slimy though Bruno could be, he wasn't lying. In the end, it turned out that the president's unreliable brother and the father of Anita's child, Jorge Santos, had begun seeing Anita again, found out about the money and then drunkenly disclosed the payments to a stranger in a bar (a tabloid reporter, it turned out) after the relationship had once again gone sour. President Santos cut all ties with his brother, and Anita Morales explained her story to the press, making an impassioned defence of the Santoses' generosity and apologising to them for the problems Jorge had caused, but conservatives remained suspicious about the whole affair. Meanwhile, over the course of 2007-2008 a national grassroots conservative movement known as Anau also formed across the country. Originally known by its full name of "Americans against North American Union", the movement started out as just another group of right-wing conspiracy nuts fearing that the Hispanic Santos wished to create a union between the US and Mexico, citing his support of NAFTA and the Trans-Texas Corridor (the "NAFTA superhighway") as a congressman as proof of his plans. However, it later grew into a broader movement campaigning for a smaller government, deficit reduction and reduced immigration, and though Sam and most Democrats disparaged Anau supporters (nicknaming them "Anals"), the movement reinvigorated grassroots Republicans after three election losses and garnered the support of high-profile conservative pundits like Taylor Reid, plus several of the 2010 Republican presidential aspirants. At the very same time, grassroots progressives felt let down by Santos' decision to effectively abandon universal healthcare reform, a feeling Sam privately continued to share.

And that was all before two serious events at home shook the country in 2008.

First, on the 22nd May 2008, the sixth anniversary of the assassination of Bahji leader Abdul Shareef and the fifth of the Zoey Bartlet kidnapping, a truck bomb attack at a mall killed 67 people in Springfield, a northern Virginia town with a population of 30,000. The attack site was carefully selected; on the one hand, it was an everyday shopping mall in a suburb with a common name, an 'Anytown, USA' that most heartland Americans could identify with, but on the other, the attack was also frighteningly proximate to Washington, DC itself. The heartland thus felt destabilised and insecure – though the organisation could clearly still strike close to the capital, it was no longer just people like Zoey Bartlet who could suffer the terror of the Bahji, but ordinary people like them as well. The Bahji message claiming responsibility cited not only the Shareef assassination but also US presence in Muslim Kazakhstan as justification for the attack, further damaging public support for the mission in Central Asia. Republicans were quick to blame Santos and Attorney General Babish for failing to protect the nation, "reminding" America that only the Republicans could be trusted with homeland security. Then, just four months later in September 2008, the world trembled again. A giant investment bank in New York, GD Bendheim, simply collapsed, groaning under the weight of years of shady internal practices that were all of the sudden exposed and pulling several other major banks down with it. Both the American and global economies shuddered, and as the Santos administration intervened to limit the damage, the deficit rose too. Worse, the _Washington Post_ revealed that Treasury Secretary Rosenthal had been a board member of GD Bendheim, privy to all the firm's scams, and he soon came under insurmountable pressure to resign from both left and right. Josh and Santos showed the disgraced secretary the door and quickly nominated Maya Connor as his successor, a move that with hindsight Santos felt he should have made in the first place – Connor had after all served as Chief of Staff in the Treasury Department with Kato and since 2006, her firm MyBook had racked up a net value of $3.75 bn and130 million users worldwide. However, Wall Street and the Republicans were suspicious of the California Democrat, bringing about a ferocious confirmation fight when she first went before the Senate Finance Committee that left the country feeling still-more uncertain. All this barely two months before the November 2008 midterms.

A bloodbath ensued, in which plenty of good Democrats took it in the throat – they lost the House after just two years, fell deeper into the minority in the Senate and lost several key governorships. A Santos ally, Congressman Tim Fields of Texas, was unexpectedly defeated for re-election by a little-known dentist with heavy Anau backing, while another House Democratic star, Carol Gellsey down in Florida, was taken out by a popular centre-fielder for the Tampa Bay Rays that the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had especially recruited to run against her. The biggest scalp the Republicans claimed was the Democrats' own Senate Minority Leader, Wendell Triplehorn of New Mexico, who was taken out by a young Hispanic Republican, Congressman Ted Reyes. There were only a few bright spots for the party on that dark night. The Democrats picked up a Senate seat in Rhode Island after respected moderate/liberal Republican Senator John Swain, the former Secretary of the Navy whom Santos had briefly scouted for SecDef, was primaried by an Anau challenger who had denounced him as a "RINO" (Republican in Name Only) and had asserted in a primary debate that "unfortunately, our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which Senator Swain has become famous." As a result, Democratic nominee and Congressman Christopher Thiele went overnight from being a likely loser to the popular Swain to a dead-cert to become the state's next US senator, since the new GOP nominee was far too right-wing for the Ocean State's liberal electorate. Swain was also not the only RINO the Anau movement bagged that night. A more pure Democratic victory, meanwhile, came in Oregon's 4th district, where against all odds former White House staffer Will Bailey braved allegations of carpetbagging and made a successful stand against corrupt 16-year incumbent John Heffinger (R), finishing a fight Bailey had started there in 1994 when he had managed another Democrat's losing bid against Heffinger. Perhaps as a sign of the party's gratitude, freshman Congressman Bailey was appointed to the prestigious Ways and Means Committee. Also good for the party's morale, but less good for Santos and Josh, Bailey's former boss "Bingo" Bob Russell ran for Governor of Colorado and won in a landslide, rehabilitating the often-hapless former VP's image somewhat. Soon after the elections, Secretary Vinick announced his intention to step down so that he could more freely play king-maker in the coming Republican primaries, and though the administration was able to easily nominate respected UN Ambassador Nancy McNally to fill the void, secretly many Democrats were concerned that a campaigner as formidable as Vinick was being once again set loose against them. Santos found places for some fallen allies, choosing former Trade Subcommittee chair Gellsey to be his new US Trade Representative and nominating his old friend Fields to the Small Business Administration, though the latter confirmation was blocked by the Republicans amid allegations of cronyism, weakening the administration all the more. Calls mounted for Josh's resignation and talk even brewed of a primary challenge, with Santos' old rival Russell most often mentioned. In December a group of senior Democrats, led by now-Minority Leader Sellner, quietly indicated to the administration that they agreed, and that Santos had six months to shape up or they would throw their support to a Russell bid.

Sam was by now deeply disillusioned, more so that ever by the self-serving calls for his friend Josh's head. He instead offered his resignation to Santos, pointing out that strategic planning for the midterms had been his responsibility and that Josh was "the only reason any of us are in this building". The president accepted, and Sam and Vikki returned to California, staying with Sam's old friend CJ and her husband Danny Concannon in Santa Monica as they planned their next moves. CJ told Sam of how fulfilling she was finding the non-profit sector, building infrastructure in Africa as CEO as Franklin Hollis' Development Foundation, and told him that she knew a vacancy had opened up to lead the Consumer Federation of California (CFC) in Sacramento.

Sam went for it and became the CFC's new Executive Director, allowing him to fight on a daily basis against powerful interests to secure new protections and preserve common-sense regulations that had long ago been written off by the world as "red tape". Vikki also joined the organisation as its senior attorney. Together, they successfully lobbied to pass new state laws on campaign finance, consumer privacy, corporate price-fixing and mortgage rights and raised the CFC's profile – Sam in particular became an articulate fixture of California's airwaves. He also returned to avoiding national politics, even to the extent of making a heart-wrenching decision not to attend the opening of the Bartlet Presidential Library in 2009. However, one obstacle consistently thwarted Sam, Vikki and the CFC – the state's Republican Governor Arden Ross. Ross had gotten elected in 2006 on Vinick's coattails, painting himself as a pro-choice and socially moderate "Vinick Republican", but as Sam found out time and time again, his moderation truly was only on social issues – economically, Ross would reliably side with his corporate donors and against the interests of Californians. Nevertheless, the centrist veneer worked and he maintained decent approval ratings in the usually-Democratic state, scaring off any top-tier Democratic challengers to him for 2010. He was even speculated as a potential future White House prospect.

Elsewhere, things were worse. The run-up to the Republican primaries was well under way, with charismatic and folksy conservative West Virginia Governor Ray Sullivan the frontrunner and Royce close behind. Polls showed either of them beating Santos, or even Russell or Vice President Baker if one of them were to be the nominee. A cast of clowns beloved by the Anau movement, including evangelical Reverend Don Butler and Senator Jimmy Hobuck of South Carolina, trailed behind, but generated noise nonetheless. The economy began to stabilise as 2009 continued on, Lou Thornton was named Santos-Baker 2010's full-time campaign manager in an attempt to show the White House's seriousness, Secretary of State Nancy McNally was lauded for her efforts towards improving America's global position and the administration was able to announce that it's foreign envoy Josiah Bartlet had successfully brokered a ceasefire in Jakarta between the government of nearby Thailand and ethnic Malay PULO separatists from the country's south (bringing respite to a violent civil conflict that had killed 3,000). Nevertheless, the deficit and Santos' approvals were still bad and the administration overall still seemed rudderless. The June "Sellner deadline" passed, and Russell announced his second bid for the presidency, with the tacit or open backing of several well-connected senior Democrats.

Thanks mostly to the small boost provided by the withdrawal of US forces from Kazakhstan in December 2009 and a pair of symbolic and timely endorsements for President Santos from former Russell advisor and star Congressman Will Bailey and former President Bartlet, Russell's campaign would later falter - he ultimately carried only Colorado and a couple of other small states in the primaries, before quietly withdrawing in late February 2010. But the damage was done – no sitting president had drawn a serious internal challenge for thirty years, and the Santos-Baker ticket limped into the general election with a demoralised Democratic Party behind them. By contrast, the Republican ticket looked strong. Governor Sullivan largely mopped up in the primaries as expected, choosing the older and slightly more moderate Vietnam and DC veteran Royce as his VP and making Royce's sharp right-hand Sheila Brooks the new ticket's campaign manager. As expected, she played to the centre and stressed the blue-collar "Rust Belt Republican" credentials of the ticket (Sullivan hailing from West Virginia, Royce from Pennsylvania), tapping effectively into the sense of "homeland insecurity" that the GD Bendheim crash, the Springfield attack and everything else had left. The still-popular Vinick also campaigned heavily for the Republican ticket and was widely tipped to return to the cabinet if Sullivan won, likely at State or Treasury or perhaps even as Chief of Staff. The Democrats hit back, stressing Sullivan's extreme conservatism and inexperience with foreign affairs and tying Royce to the gridlock in Congress, but to little avail.

Back in California, Democrats had continued to cast about for a challenger to Ross. In late 2009, Josh visited Sam while on a fundraising swing in California and begged him to run, noting his increasing profile as the CFC's main spokesman. Senior Democrats in the state, including both its US senators, also asked him. Seaborn repeatedly refused, liking his current post and still feeling wounded by his first and last bid for office in Golden State all those years ago. But in November 2009, it had all changed. With Seaborn's help, Democrats in the State Legislature passed a package of common-sense health insurance reforms that would bind insurers to spend 85% of their funds on care for their policyholders, make it harder to drop people from coverage on technicalities right when they needed to claim for major health expenses, prevent companies from charging extra fees to elderly consumers who received their bills in the mail instead of electronically and strengthen regulation on health insurance rates. Given the upcoming election, few expected that Arden Ross would fail to sign. But they were wrong. Ross, who had taken over $1,300,000 in contributions from the health insurance industry, vetoed the bill. Sam talked to Vikki, and before he could even bring up the idea, she told her husband to run. He then resigned the CFC and told Josh he was in, who made a recommendation about campaign staff – agreeing, Sam hauled Toby Ziegler out of his academic quasi-retirement at Columbia University and back into politics to serve as campaign manager.

Setting the passions of California Dems alight and raising millions mostly from small donors, Sam easily won the primary and charged into the general. Ross' well-funded campaign was brutal – it sought to paint Sam as an "anti-business liberal lobbyist" and as a "Washington insider" who was an "architect of this White House's flailing non-leadership". The right-wing Family Values Leadership Council (FVLC), in an unlikely alliance with pro-choice Governor Ross, ran ominous attack ads against Sam accusing him of "palling around with prostitutes and traitors" (in reference to the old Laurie scandal and Toby's shuttle leak). As a result, Sam's negatives began to rise during the campaign. But Sam gave as good as he got, hitting Ross hard on the insurance veto and his special interest ties, making clear that Ross was enemy of ordinary Californians and that Sam was their friend, pointing to his record at the CFC and defending his time in the Santos Administration. Sam's close friend Ainsley Hayes, who had recently resigned the White House, moved to Sacramento and founded a group called 'Republicans for Seaborn'. In an ad she cut for the Seaborn campaign rebutting some of Ross's attacks, she said

"I'm a lifelong Republican, and there's plenty of issues I don't see eye to eye with Sam Seaborn on. But he has big plans for the state that he loves, has worked for its consumers and to the bottom of his heart he is a good man, and a qualified man. He believes in the value of public service and wants to do right by the people of California, and that's why he's running. Isn't that what you deserve in a governor?"

Front and centre in his campaign was a bold pledge that if elected governor, Sam's very first act would be to legislate for universal healthcare in California, where well over six million residents (more than 20% of the population) were uninsured, and where many more that were found themselves ripped off by their insurer in their hour of need. Pleasing Ainsley and moderate voters in the state, he also pledged to solve the state's longstanding budget crisis. In the end, Sam's message resonated, and as the results rolled in on November 2nd 2010, Samuel Norman Seaborn was declared governor-elect of the great state of California. He would be sworn in on January 3rd 2011.

In Washington, Team Santos were unfortunately unable to share in their former member's joy. As expected for a Democrat, President Santos swept the Pacific Coast, the Great Lakes and the Northeast - without Vinick to contend with, this even included California and the liberal-with-an-indie-streak states of Maine and Vermont. The president also took the heavily Latino states of Nevada and New Mexico and even unexpectedly captured one swing state Vinick had carried in 2006, Iowa, by about 4,000 votes, bringing his electoral vote tally to 248. But 248 wasn't 270. South Carolina and Arizona returned to the Republicans after Santos' unexpected wins four years before. So did Santos' own home state of Texas and Bingo Bob's home state of Colorado, by a margin just narrow enough that it was plausible that disgruntled local pro-Russell Democrats might have handed it to Sullivan. The reliable "bellwether state" of Missouri, which had gone with all but one Electoral College winner since 1904 and had been carried by Santos in a promising sign back in '06, also went to Sullivan. And most damning of all, Royce's industrial home state of Pennsylvania, Democratic for 20 years, was sufficiently enticed by Sheila Brooks' "Rust Belt Republican" strategy to hand its 21 electoral votes to the GOP this time, even despite Vice President Baker's own association with the state. This gave Ray Sullivan 290 electoral votes and the presidency, on top of a 3.5 million win in the popular vote and Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Sullenly, Josh gave the order to the White House staff to start aiding Sullivan's incoming team with the transition. The Republicans were back; all-powerful, armed with an agenda and ready to turn back twelve years of hard-fought progress under Bartlet and Santos.


	2. Prologue Part 2 – Republican Rule

Disclaimer: The West Wing and its characters belong to and were created by Rob Lowe, Aaron Sorkin, John Wells, NBC and Warner Brothers. Don't sue etc. Thanks/attributions to HarshLight/LucienTJ of Flickr, Rob Lowe and Electoral Atlas for the image.

"Sam. You're gonna run for President one day. Don't be scared. You can do it. I believe in you."

Prologue Part 2 – Republican Rule

On January 20th 2011, President Ray Sullivan was sworn in on the Bible by Justice Evelyn Baker Lang as she was duty bound to do, though it was an experience most assumed the "liberal lion" chief justice had not much enjoyed.

Raymond "Ray" Harland Sullivan had been born in Charleston, West Virginia in 1959 to a loyally Republican suburban family, his mother a homemaker and his father a vice president at the United Bank of West Virginia. He graduated cum laude in Business Administration from Vanderbilt University and then from the West Virginia University College of Law in 1985 with his JD, clerked for future Supreme Court Justice Owen Brady and spent three years at the law firm Jackson Kelly LLP in Charleston. In 1988, at the young age of 29, Sullivan was nominated to serve as US Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, making him the youngest US Attorney in history (Senator Arnold Vinick, who would later elevate Sullivan to international stardom in 2006, voted for his confirmation). In 1996, Sullivan ran for WV Attorney General, became the first Republican to win the post in the ancestrally-Democratic state since 1928, and was re-elected in 2000. As both federal prosecutor and state AG, he became known for his toughness on crime, including white-collar as well as the violent crime politicians traditionally stressed – he had the highest white-collar conviction rate in the state's history, breaking from the image that Republicans were too in league with their corporate cronies to take on such matters. In the 2004 miderms, he ran for governor under a conservative reformist banner of "better government, not bigger government" and won with 61% of the vote, having convinced many Independents and conservative West Virginia Democrats to vote for him in a state Bartlet-Hoynes had just carried two years before. As governor, he quickly balanced the state's budget without raising taxes (instead, he had shred parts of the state's social safety net as he cut back spending, a harbinger of things to come in his presidency). He was also known for backing right-wing court nominees and for tending to ignore West Virginia's environmental problems, given his and the state Republican Party's close ties to big coal. After serving as Vinick's VP candidate in 2006, he was the presumptive Republican frontrunner for 2010 and was easily re-elected in November 2008, announcing his own presidential bid early in 2009.

After taking the oath, he began to speak:

"We gather here today to complete the peaceful transition that is the cornerstone of our proud and stable democracy. First of all, I feel a duty to thank President Santos for his service to this country the last four years, and for his graceful concession after a spirited election. I follow in the footsteps of many other towering men, and our enduring freedom assures me that many more great men will follow. I take this sacred oath at a time of great tumult in our nation. We have seen crisis at home and abroad, turmoil in our economy and rising threats abroad to the bedrock security we rely on. Americans have begun to feel that the flame of liberty, passed to us by our forefathers, may not be as easy to pass to the next generation as we might hope. But make no mistake. There have been dark days before in our country. There have always been those who have bet against us. But time and time again, we Americans have proven them wrong, because in these United States of America we have always shown the world the path to freedom, prosperity and security. We will do so again

"There are those that feel that faith in government is the only way forward, the only way to secure the American dream for another generation. It is true that we owe many things to government – the rule of law, the dedication of our law enforcement officers and first-responders and, above all, the might of our armed forces. All are there to keep us safe. But we must never forget that often, it is the church or the synagogue, the business and the family, and above all, society, that the strength of the American character is drawn from, and that government can get in the way. I have always said, we need better government, not bigger government".

Those few lines were indicative, and President Sullivan's first 100 days were precisely what Democrats had feared. Hawkish neocon Glen Allen Walken was confirmed for Secretary of Defense. Sullivan's new White House Chief of Staff and personal enforcer was Steve Atwood, a ruthless and Machiavellian partisan Republican who had been RNC chairman during the successful 2008 midterms, Walken's right-hand man when he was House Speaker and manager of Walken's ill-fated 2006 presidential primary campaign (it was felt that Walken, who like his fellow Missourian Harry Truman had never truly wanted the presidency, ran simply because he was expected to and didn't campaign hard enough, in sharp contrast to the passionate and persuasive Vinick – a split in the conservative field further helped Vinick). Despite getting Sullivan and Royce elected as campaign manager, the more centrist Sheila Brooks was only made Deputy Chief of Staff, and thus was less-well positioned to moderate the administration's policies than some Dems had counted on. Right-wing former RNC operative Jane Braun, who had managed Sullivan's campaign in the primaries before being forced out and replaced by Brooks for the general, came back as Senior Advisor to the President, embittered and once again rivalling Sheila for power. Secretary of State went to Morgan Mitchell, who had been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prior to his resignation from his Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2005 to become president of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. Back in 2000, Mitchell's very first act as a US senator had been to block President Bartlet's attempt to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Meanwhile Robert Royce settled into the Vice Presidency, though little did he know he would spend much of his four years as an irrelevance.

At the age of 74, Vinick also returned to the cabinet, but this time as Secretary of the Treasury, again of no comfort to Democrats since this was the policy area where Vinick had always been the most staunchly conservative, and thus where they had the most to fear from him. The first Sullivan-Vinick budget slashed discretionary spending across the board, but not by nearly enough to counteract the deficit-raising effects of their new tax cuts for the rich. With a Republican majority in the House, the deeply flawed plan nevertheless passed easily, and though Senate Minority Leader Sarah Brainerd (D-Ohio) did her best to lead a filibuster against their Senate majority, the Republicans were able to chip off a few Blue-Dogish Democratic votes and make cloture. Essentially the same happened on two other early Sullivan Administration priorities; the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and Sanctity of Marriage Act (SOMA, banning the federal government from recognising same-sex marriages). Brainerd wasn't a bad leader, nor was Sellner in the House for that matter, but numbers weren't on either of their sides and there was little they could do to stop the onslaught.

The various people from the Bartlet-Santos era, meanwhile, had gone various different ways. Matt and Helen Santos returned to Houston, where they founded a new health non-profit, the Friendship Health Society, and many new community health clinics, as Santos had planned to do before he had run for the presidency. Ronna Beckman returned to Texas with them, becoming Friendship's first Executive Director. On Santos' advice, former Secretary of State Nancy McNally followed a similar track, returning to her native New Orleans and founding the Confidence Foundation, a Louisiana-wide early-education charity (named from the third word of the Louisiana state motto, "Union, Justice and Confidence"). Domestic policy expert Angela Blake, who Nancy McNally had come to know during their time together in the Santos cabinet, moved there too to help found and run it. Annabeth Schott returned to the media, hosting her own political show on MSNBC called The Schott Story. The Bartlets still lived in New Hampshire, except for Zoey, who was living with Charlie Young in DC, who had graduated Georgetown Law with his JD and was working for Arnold & Porter LLP. Congressman Will Bailey, newly re-elected in the Oregon 4th, was named Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for the 2012 midterms, a more vital role than ever given the now-urgent need to counterbalance the Sullivan Administration. Amy Gardner became President of Emily's List, where she had once worked as Issues Director, devoting herself to increasing the number of pro-choice Democratic women in office and launching an effort to promote the idea of a female Democratic president in 2014 – Brainerd, McNally, former US Trade Rep Carol Gellsey, former Treasury Sec Maya Connor and Senator Ricky Rafferty were all possibilities. 2010 Santos-Baker manager Lou Thornton became a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, beginning to rebuild her career after overseeing one of its few electoral losses. Edith Ortega (who had been Deputy Manager for Strategic Planning in the Santos-McGarry campaign, Political Director in the Santos Administration and later WH Deputy Chief of Staff under Josh when Sam left) became Executive Director of the DNC. Bram Howard joined Minority Leader Brainerd's office as Deputy Chief of Staff.

The remainder of the Bartlet-Santos brigade appeared to migrate to California, in order to orbit around the fledgling Seaborn administration. Donna Moss moved to Sacramento to become Press Secretary to Governor-elect Seaborn. Josh decided to move with her, setting up a political consulting firm there with Toby Ziegler and Californian pollster Joey Lucas. LZL Research quickly became the most sought-after Democratic polling and strategy firm in America, and was a go-to source of advice and polling for Sam's administration, Bailey's DCCC, dozens of 2012 midterm hopefuls and even some potential 2014 presidential candidates like former Vice President Eric Baker. Vikki Rajan-Brown Seaborn became Chief Legal Counsel in her husband's administration. As the paces of their lives slowed down, Josh and Donna also found the time to get engaged. Otto Castaneda, who had grown up in "Filipinotown" (Echo Park, Los Angeles), became the governor's Communications Director and chief speechwriter, having developed a rapport with Seaborn during long nights of speechwriting in the West Wing. Ainsley Hayes, who had taken to California during the campaign and had briefly begun working as a research fellow at the conservative Pacific Research Institute in Sacramento, joined the governor's team as Deputy Chief of Staff – Sam hoped she would be able to strike compromises with the minority Republicans in the State Legislature, who could block his budgets and planned healthcare reforms if they wanted to thanks to a requirement for a 2/3rds supermajority for budgets or tax rises. He was however adamant that his Chief of Staff be a longtime Californian, and as Leo McGarry had said years before about the higher version of the same office, there was only "one name" - even if she was once upon a time a Ohio girl. CJ was reluctant to re-enter politics, but Danny, Toby and others implored her. "We've got a Republican president tearing apart everything you and I worked to accomplish in eight years. Sam took a run and ousted another conservative creep in this big crazy state, which means California's gonna be the bastion of sanity for the next few years - you know how bad that means things have gotten? You've done amazing work for Hollis, but I got back on the frontlines for what this country needs, and we need you too as well", Toby had told her. The Hollis Foundation was now well-established and CJ had a competent deputy there who could easily take over the operation. Baby Gail was now three, and Danny was well-used to being a stay at home dad as her mother flew around the world overseeing aid projects – at least this job would anchor her in the Golden State, he had pointed out.

Together with CJ, Vikki, Ainsley, Donna and Otto and with advice from Josh, Toby and Joey, Governor Seaborn rapidly built a record of achievements. Democrats in the State Legislature passed a law legalising same-sex marriage, netting a few Republican votes while they were at it, which Governor Seaborn proudly signed. Judicial rulings had brought about marriage equality in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa, but Sam became only the third state governor (after Democratic colleagues in New Hampshire and Maine) and the first from a big state to sign an equal marriage bill passed by a state legislature. He also signed into law an omnibus package of consumer protections, including many he had personally fought for at the Consumer Federation which Arden Ross and Republicans had blocked.

Most important of all, as soon as Sam came into office, his efforts at healthcare reform began in earnest. Some California Democrats favoured a single-payer plan, something like Medicare or the Canadian health system, which Sam agreed were good in theory. But the reality was that while 19% of Californians lacked health coverage and 26% had coverage though Medicare and Medicaid, 56% of the state's 30 million residents were already covered through private insurance and the middle-class were fearful of huge changes. Having studied different options closely, Sam knew that in Europe, the governments of the Netherlands and Switzerland had created universal healthcare systems by mandating that everyone purchase private insurance, regulating the companies heavily to force them to provide a set package of treatments and toeffectively act as public utilities, and then subsidising the insurance premiums for people who couldn't pay for them themselves, guaranteeing healthcare as an entitlement for all as liberals desired and strengthening the coverage of those that had it at the same time. By some metrics, these countries even had more efficient healthcare than single-payer countries like Canada and the UK, and these systems were still cheaper than America's, which was gradually bankrupting the country despite poor outcomes and a crisis with the uninsured. A more conservative version of Sam's plan had already been passed in Massachusetts and in DC a liberal US Senator Sam had always admired, Senator Richard Warren (D-Oregon), had consistently introduced a bill to legislate for a system something like it at the federal level, calling it the Healthy Americans Act (HAA) – the HAA had even attracted Senator Herman Morton (R-Wyoming) and a cross-party coalition of a dozen Republicans and Democrats as co-sponsors. Sam felt that if he passed a similar plan at the state level in California instead of a more divisive and radical single-payer plan, it would provoke less resistance and potentially serve as a model for other states or the federal government to follow. Ainsley, another reasonable Republican, also supported the approach and promised to help Sam sell it to Republicans in the State Legislature. After a few months of wrangling, the Seaborn Healthy Californians Act (named in homage to the Warren-Morton plan) passed. Within just over a year of its passage, for the very first time all residents of America's largest state had health coverage, and the start of cost control could be seen. This brought him much acclaim across the country, especially among Democrats, and presidential speculation around the young governor began to mount.

Meanwhile, as California became a beacon of progress, things deteriorated for the country as a whole. President Sullivan signed legislation weakening Lyndon Johnson's Clean Air Act and limiting federally-funded stem cell research, while the right-wing nativist Anau movement had helped kill an immigration reform deal that Sellner and Brainerd had attempted to eke out with Republican congressional leaders. Then in September 2011, Sullivan, Atwood and Secretaries Walken and Mitchell made their mark on the world stage with Operation Eagle Watch, the Pentagon's codename for a week-long campaign of airstrikes and special forces ground raids on government ministries, military targets and suspected nuclear facilities in both Syria and Iran. This set of sudden strikes were launched without a UN resolution and with direct support only from the UK's Tory Prime Minister Maureen Graty and from Israel, once again under the hawkish leadership of Eli Zahavy and Likud following a second election earlier in the year. They were met with condemnation from much of the world, especially since the most recent official IAEA report had said that Syria posed minimal threat and Iran was not as far along with its nuclear programme as the Sullivan Administration was claiming. Debate and congressional consultation in the US prior to strikes was also minimal, despite the public being war-weary after Kazakhstan. The retaliation from Syria and Iran was swift, though it was of course indirect – Hamas and Hezbollah forces declared open war on both Israel and US/NATO peacekeepers in Palestine, forcing them to respond. Casualties mounted quickly. The peace accord Josiah Bartlet had painstakingly put together in 2005 rapidly collapsed, as Israel retaliated by re-entering Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank for the first time in six long years and the carefully-built aura of US neutrality fell apart. American forces in the region were left alone as European peacekeepers withdrew from Palestine amid the chaos. Even British forces began to plan their exit, after Prime Minister Graty's government fell on a confidence vote over her ill-advised support for Eagle Watch and the resulting election brought opposition leader Elliot Millburne and his resurgent Labour Party to power. Prime Minister Millburne pledged a new British foreign policy "based on our values, not just our alliances" – code for not always complying with American or Israeli demands as stridently as Graty had, given the disaster of Eagle Watch.

Throughout the crisis, former Secretary of State Nancy McNally became a fixture on American airwaves. She was the Democrats' most vocal and effective critic of the lack of planning and sound intelligence behind Eagle Watch and the disastrous effects on the fragile peace that her, Bartlet and Santos had fought hard to create in the volatile region. After months of bloodshed, President Sullivan was forced into a humiliating climbdown. Democrats McNally and Bartlet were asked to join a team led by Treasury Secretary Vinick – Secretary of State Mitchell had lost too much credibility - and go to the region to negotiate a set of new and urgent ceasefires. After months of wrangling, all parties pulled back from their various entanglements, and a few European nations including the UK redeployed their peacekeepers to the region in a symbolic show of support. But the region remained deeply shaken by the crisis, as was the Sullivan Administration's domestic support. Nancy McNally's role throughout the crisis, both as a prescient opponent of the initial airstrikes and as an eventual 'saviour' from the crisis, and her status as an African-American stateswoman in a Democratic Party eager to break further barriers also sparked widespread discussion about her as another potential Democratic 2014 prospect. This was on top of her education work in Louisiana, which had also helped strengthened her domestic policy profile.

As a result of the crisis and slow economic growth, Sullivan's approval suffered and the GOP found out what Santos' Democrats had four years before – what the voters giveth, they taketh away. Democrats took back the House, and several governorships and state legislatures. In the Senate, they made gains, but were too deep in minority to take it back in one swoop. In Minnesota, left-wing Congresswoman Diane Frost defeated the incumbent, Senator Norman Ramsey (R), becoming the openly gay US senator. Down in Texas, Vietnamese-American former congressman and local businessman Peter Lien (D-Galveston) won an open Senate seat - this made him the first Democrat elected to statewide office in Texas since Hoynes way back in the 1990s. Carol Gellsey, a rising star who had been booted from office in the '08 midterm slaughter, got the third and best wind of her career. She had lost once before – in 1996, she left Congress after two terms to run for governor of Florida, narrowly losing to Robert Ritchie after he painted her as a "Washington insider" and an "Ivy League, New York-San Francisco liberal" (a reference to her education, Mills College and a JD/MBA from Columbia, though Gellsey had always wondered if "New York" also referenced her Judaism). That time, she had briefly worked as a lecturer at Stetson University College of Law, within her old 10th congressional district and a fifteen minute drive from her home in St Petersburg, and then clawed her way back into Congress in 1998, working her way up to Trade Subcommittee Chair on Ways and Means and Caucus Chair (fourth-rank in the Democratic leadership) prior to her second defeat in 2008. She then served two years as Santos' US Trade Rep (making her an ambassador), during which time she brokered free trade deals with South Korea and fought with the Chinese over intellectual property, and then turned down several lucrative offers from law firms and business groups. Instead, Ambassador Gellsey returned to her old district and once again worked as a lecturer at Stetson, while plotting a comeback against Congressman Kirk Alomar (R), the increasingly incompetent right-wing former baseball player who had taken her out. With strong support from local and national Democrats, including plenty of early funding from Amy and Emily's List, she bludgeoned Alomar 61-39 and retook her old seat. But Gellsey had bigger things planned. As House Minority Leader, slippery moderate Mark B Sellner (D-New York) had been expected to re-ascend to the speakership once Democrats took back the House. But Gellsey had come to dislike the man, as had many Democrats, and so as a freshman (albeit one who had previously served seven terms), Gellsey took the daring and unprecedented step of challenging him. Amy and other Gellsey allies began whipping behind the scenes, and to their delight, Gellsey won, becoming the first female Speaker. Will Bailey, having overseen the DCCC and gotten elected to a third term, was elected Majority Whip by a grateful House Democratic Caucus, making him third-ranking behind Speaker Gellsey and African-American Majority Leader Jim Jackson (D-South Carolina 6th).

Back in Sacramento, with healthcare done, Sam took on the next challenge in 2012 – California's budget crisis. Working with CJ, Ainsley, his budget director and the minority and majority leaderships in both the Assembly (the lower house) and the Senate, Sam painstakingly crafted a $96,000,000,000 state budget, the first one in decades that actually left the state in surplus. The budget required large and controversial spending cuts and entitlement reforms. It pained Sam to make these and he nearly lost many progressive allies troubled by the damage they might do, but the budget needed to be balanced and discipline restored if California was to be the stable and prosperous state he wanted it to be. Prison spending was cut, pension liabilities controversially reduced. But the deal also included tax rises on those earning more than £250,000 a year, ratified by the people with 54% of the vote in a November 2012 referendum. As soon as that result had come down the wire, after much campaigning by Sam and his allies, Sam knew he had done the impossible – after years of turmoil, he had taken California out of deficit and put its fiscal house in order (though of course, a few Republican critics continued to carp that he had used "accounting tricks"). Presidential speculation around Sam reached fever pitch, and not just among Democrats – he made the cover of Time and even Bloomberg BusinessWeek, not usually one for lavishing praise on liberals, suddenly became a Seaborn fan. In his State of the State address on January 7th 2013, in which the new budget was a key theme, Sam decided to echo what he had told Josh a few years before:

"The voters sent us here to do a duty, and yet we the servants of the people are all too often seen to evade our most basic responsibilities – to seek compromise, to leave aside the timidity, the demagoguery and to stop playing games. Put simply, to actually govern and to serve our voters' interests. The new budget deal we've struck and the new taxes our electorate laudably embraced represent a triumph over the pettiness and partisanship that has all too often dominated Sacramento. I hope it also serves as a model for our federal leaders in Washington, who are yet to face up to their own challenges. An underrated former president of our great nation once said that 'our problems are too complex for simple slogans or for quick solutions. We cannot solve them without effort and sacrifice'. It is in that spirit we put forth our new budget. Not a budget that will entirely please everyone, or indeed anyone, but one which gets the job done and will be a new bedrock for prosperity in this great state. We did not come here to do what is easy – we came here to do what is needed, and what is right, and that is what we have accomplished."

Two days later, the 2014 Democratic primaries started in earnest when Vice President Eric Baker announced his presidential candidacy in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The company he kept at his announcement almost spoke louder than his own speech. Local Congressman Tim Widen, a Catholic blue-collar union Democrat, was present, and gave his home state's former governor a hearty endorsement, calling him "one of us" and "a man of humble beginnings who understands heartland values and the value of a day's work". When Baker's campaign advisers were asked by reporters whether a Baker Administration would seek to repeal Sullivan's federal ban on gay marriage, SOMA, the advisers dodged the question – while a key issue for liberals, it was rumoured Baker was worried how the issue would affect his efforts to win back blue-collar voters. Also present were two out of state officials - Governor Luis Mantilla of New York and former Michigan governor Jennifer Hutchins. Hutchins had served with Baker when they had both been industrial state governors in the 2000s, while Mantilla had been elected in New York in 2006 and had previously been speculated to be a potential presidential or vice presidential aspirant. Both, along with Widen, were announced as co-chairs of the campaign. The subtext of all this was clear; Baker had the backing of the big-name establishment Dems and of labor unions, he had a lot of executive experience, he had Latino and female supporters and above all, only he would have enough appeal with the insecure blue-collar voters Santos had lost heavily to Sullivan in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. In other words, only Eric Baker had the heft and gravitas to unite the Democratic coalition and seize the White House, the gathering narrative went, despite the fact that Santos had already lost Pennsylvania and the Midwest with Baker on the ticket. Back in California, Team Seaborn also sensed this was meant as an implicit shot at the rumoured candidacy of their man – he was too young, too liberal, too West Coast, too Ivy League to be president. Baker's spokespeople stressed a new poll showing him on 41% as a sign of his inevitability, with Seaborn on 17%, Nancy McNally (still also under speculation) on 11% and everyone else in single digits. It became clear to Sam and Vikki that if he was serious, he would have to enter the race immediately. And so, at Sam's request, Toby set to work on an announcement speech for the 20th of January. It was to be given outside the State Capitol building in Sacramento.


End file.
